In today's business environment, a business person has various ways to receive information electronically. These electronic communication sources include, but are not necessarily limited to, electronic mail (i.e., email), Short Message Service (SMS)/text messaging, instant messaging service, voicemail and the like. In addition, the recent advent of social networking and blogging services provide for additional electronic communication sources.
The numerous electronic communication sources provide the business person with a daunting task of trying to manage all of the communications received by the business person or otherwise relevant to the business person. The volume of electronic communication sources and particularly the volume of electronic communications emanating from these sources makes if extremely difficult for the business person to stay well informed and to address concerns in a timely fashion. In this regard, not only is the management of electronic communication a time consuming endeavor, it is also unreliable in that a business person can easily inadvertently miss or otherwise disregard an electronic communication that is critical and requires immediate attention.
Certain business persons, such as high level executives or the like, have addressed this problem by using personal assistants or other individuals to manage their business communications for them. In other words, business communications intended for the level business person are screened by the personal assistant or the like and only those deemed important are then forwarded to the attention of the high level business person. In certain instances, if the electronic communications are deemed to be highly critical the personal assistant may attempt to immediately contact the high level business person, either in person, via telephone communication or the like. While such a system can be somewhat effective, it does not guarantee that critical and/or highly important communication is forwarded to the high level business person. This is because the personal assistant is prone to same problems that plague the high level business person; important or otherwise critical communications can be overlooked. Moreover, the personal assistant may not process the knowledge to able to determine precisely which communications are important and/or critical, especially in the instance in which the issue surrounding the importance is a burgeoning issue not previously addressed by the high level business person.
In addition to problems related to communication oversights, such a personal assistant communication screening system tends to be inefficient and costly, in that, it adds another layer to the electronic communication process thereby potentially slowing down the communication and requires another individual's time to manage the communications. Such a system is obviously cost prohibitive in terms of managing communication for all business people regardless of stature or profile within the business.
An additional problem related to numerous communication sources and the volume of electronic communication associated with these sources is that, even in the instance in which a communication is received and read by the intended business person, the potential exists that the business person is unable to appreciate the significance or criticality of the communication because the business person is unaware of other current, real-time factors, such as current business performance, current industry performance or the like. In such instance, an otherwise innocuous communication may rise to the important or critical communication level, if the business person was aware of related business factors.
Therefore, a need exists to provide for a system for managing electronic communications from various sources and for notifying the electronic communication recipient when a critical or priority communication is received. The desired methods, apparatus and systems should provide for managing the electronic communications from all or most of the electronic communication sources associated with the business person, such as, but not limited to, email, text messaging instant messaging, voice mail, social networking and the like. In addition, the desired systems, methods, apparatus and the like should provide for the business person/user to dynamically define criteria for determining which communications are highly important/critical and, thus, give rise to the need to notify the business person/user of such communications. Additionally, the desired systems, methods, apparatus and computer program products should provide for taking into account current business performance and/or industry performance in determining which communications rise to the level of important and/or critical.